New in Band/Jazz/Choir

The Eloquent Conductor is a comprehensive resource designed to develop a detailed and nuanced conducting technique. As some of you know, Glenn spent many years at the U of C and was a frequent festival adjudicator and guest conductor throughout Canada during his tenure.

Teaching Music through Performance in Jazz, Volume 2 is the much-anticipated successor to the acclaimed first book in this series, providing insights of today's top jazz educators and performers as well as invaluable analyses of the best repertoire published for jazz ensembles, from developing to advanced level. Canadian contributors include Kevin Willms (Calgary), Jeremy Brown (Calgary), Tom Dust (Edmonton), Murray Smith (Edmonton), Bill Kristjanson (Winnipeg).

With this volume, the celebrated Teaching Music through Performance series is available for the first time for leaders of beginning jazz ensembles. Tom Dust (Edmonton) and Murray Smith (Edmonton) are Canadian contributors.

Conferences are great at pulling music folk together, from provincial conferences to international gatherings. Curious for some brief musings regarding the Midwest Clinic from December? This kind of musical stuff turns my crank.

Getting successful, contemporary FJH composers Brian Balmages and Randall Standridge together in close proximity had not happened before because they had worked with different publishers. To see these creative minds meet and catch an intimate conversation with these younger writers talking about their craft is worth the price of the conference right there. To see the discussion evolve regarding the compositional and editorial brilliance of senior composer Robert Sheldon is magical. Very cool to discover that kind of respect in two camps and see it paid forward to a senior colleague and a common mentor! To see featured works by Balmages, Standridge and Sheldon, visit us at http://www.musicdirect.ca, click the "Browse Music Direct Collection” tab, then under "Browse Concert Band" heading, select “Browse Concert Band by Composer." There are 27 selected works by Balmages, 27 by Standridge, and 17 by Sheldon.

If you ever get the chance to meet up with him, Bruce Pearson of "Kjos Publishing" is a wonderful guy and an interesting story teller. Bruce regaled how after college, he had a job selling pumpkins from a garden. Neil Kjos Jr. (son of the founder) met him there one day. Previously, the two had discussed writing a book for directors about beginning band challenges and solutions. On this day, Neil says to Bruce, “Well how 'bout it Bruce, shall we go ahead and write this book?" That signaled the end of Bruce’s pumpkin days and the start of their "Best in Class" method (remember that?) which led to "Standard of Excellence" and the later "Tradition of Excellence." Thus, with his pumpkin days firmly behind him, Bruce started on a 50+ year journey as a method book author and composer with the "Kjos Music Company." To see band methods by Bruce Pearson and others, check out http://www.musicdirect.ca, and the “Method/Theory Books” tab.

A big hats off to Saskatchewan composer Peter Meechan who had compositions Song of Hope and Forgotten Children performed at the Midwest. View Peter’s music here http://www.meechanmusic.com

As announced in December, our Free Coffee Card Promotion is on! Order $200.00 or more in January, 2016, and receive a complimentary $10.00 Starbucks or Tim Hortons coffee card. Orders may include reeds, music supplies, method books, folders, band or choral music or anything found in our catalogue (http://www.musicdirect.ca). Looking for a specific piece of music? Music Direct carries over 4000 performance pieces for concert band, jazz band and choir. But... if you need to order music not listed, give us a shout - special ordering is a big part of what we do. Need supplies? Our goal is to have common music items on hand, ready to ship! And of course, qualifying purchases will include a coffee card.

Thank you for reading this. Happy New Year as you go back to doing your magic in 2016.